It is with great pride, or at least an improvement on inertia, that Elisberg Industries has finally added a second member to our Corporate Board of Directors. We welcome Adam Belanoff as the Senior Executive VP of Shipping.

Thanks to a fortuitous oversight, Adam Belanoff was brought in to head the shipping division despite a lack of qualifications. The result of a small mix-up, he applied under the mistaken belief that he would be working on boats and get to spend a lot of time on cruise ships. Despite that misunderstanding, Adam has shown himself adept at management, with a skill for hiring people below him who have great experience and then leaving them alone to do their job. This has allowed him to spend time away from Elisberg Industries and write on staff for such television shows as The Closer, Major Crimes, (which he insists are two different programs, but the latter is really The Closer with a paint job), Murphy Brown, Cosby and Titus, for which he famously wrote all the boat episodes, none of which got produced since the show didn’t involve seacraft. His first name is short for “Admiral.”

As a service to our shareholders, Nell Minow will be doing governance oversight on Mr. Belanoff as soon as we get her the requested papers. This might take some time. Of course, since I own the majority of voting shares, his approval has already passed, so it's a moot point regardless of what she comes up with.

If you have any issues with any of our fine products shipping to you properly, especially if it is perishable (we plan to institute a tropical fruit service), please know that you should take that up with the appropriate representative. Not Mr. Belanaoff. That's why he delegates. Also, the new season of Major Crimes is currently being written, so you probably wouldn't reach him anyway. And he asks us to mention that customers not keep asking about Cosby because, no, he doesn't know anything. "Might as well as Elisberg about O.J.," he says, "since he probably knows more about that."

As I mentioned, Tuesday is Travel Day. Heading back to Los Angeles from Chicago. I'll probably be posting something again in the early afternoon. The elves promise that they're cleaning up the hallway and reception area, so things should be looking okay again by then. If not, explanations will be due...

Some of you sharp eyed folks -- and that's the way I think of pretty much all the visitors to these hallways, since they somehow figured out about getting here to Elisberg Industries, although I'm told there are a few stragglers who got here by mistake, thinking they had found a website about Elsinore Castle in Hamlet, and have a hard time finding the way out -- may have noticed a new button on the right side of the page, near the top. For those who did miss it, it's called simply, "Click to Amazon."

The reason for the button, which can also be considered by many a badge of honor, is because Elisberg Industries has just been proudly accepted as an official member of the exclusive Amazon Affiliate program, limited to only about 30 million websites or so.

The way it works is very simple.

If you plan to shop on Amazon -- not just for something mentioned on this site, but absolutely anything at all -- this website will actually get an extremely small commission on whatever you buy during your session on Amazon if you click on the "Click to Amazon" button here first.

(By the way, "extremely small" means pretty much what it says. It's not quite sub-atomic, but it's on the same periodic chart. However, unlike many of the elements it happily has adhesive properties, so over time, such things an build up.)

There's nothing else you have to do. The experience browsing and shopping on Amazon is exactly the same. No price difference. No nothing different. It's just that Amazon will know that you got there from here. So, they'll send a few shekels this way if you happen to buy something.

I should note that one of the senior executives here suggested that our intern Larry Bondurant stand at the exit with a tip jar, but it was determined that he wouldn't then be available to work the photocopier or make runs to deli for sandwiches. And as long as he's here to learn the business and get college credit, he should probably make himself more useful. So, this is a brain-dead easy, cheap, and actually, literally free way to defray the cost of the ink. Or whatever the pixels are made of.

Anyway, no need to ever click through. Your choice. We'll never know. That's between you and your God of choice. But if you are here already and plan to buy something or just expect to head next to Amazon, perhaps you'll consider it. And if and when, it'll be much appreciated. (It works too, by the way, if you click on a those book icons for The Wild Roses or A Christmas Carol 2: The Return of Scrooge -- though that will cleverly take you directly to the book website pages.)

Since I know you have better things to do than remember all this, I may post a brief reminder on occasion. (Side note: "May" shall herein be defined as "will") But otherwise, you're now fully-covered. Something akin to the Affordable Care Act, as long as you don't work for Hobby Lobby.

That's all. I just thought you'd want to know. Well...maybe not "want," but willing to put up with reading a bunch of paragraphs having nothing to do with politics, musicals or Windows tablets.

Yesterday, the management made a whole bit to-do over this website having its first day ever with over 2,000 "unique visitors," to the extent that the Board of Directors voted almost unanimously to offer a proclamation of thanks.

Well...it turns out that the very day -- hmmm, let me put it this way.

Yes, it's true, on Saturday Elisberg Industries passed 3,000 visitors in a single. My guess is that they weren't just "unique", but many of them were probably lost.

You might not think that this is a problem, but you must understand that we went to moderate expense to get a lot of "2,000" paraphernalia to decorate the hallways and even ordered mugs and t-shirts with a "2,000" logo to sell online and in the company commissary, which is open to the public. And now -- well, that's a big waste, isn't it? All I can say is look for some really good deals on eBay.

The thing is, our in-house IT department suspects this surge is likely due to the aforementioned, new Apple commercial that uses the song "Chicken Fat," and people are searching for what that odd piece of music is and found the article our crack and prescient researchers did a full year ago on it. Many of those people appear to be wandering the halls aimlessly, so perhaps they'll stick around -- and welcome to you all, regardless. But several staff members are doing their best to be patient as heads stick in their office and ask, "Where's the way to the chickens?"

To be clear, it's all very nice, and we certainly appreciate anyone coming by, whether or not they stay (and we hope they do), but it still doesn't help with all the leftover "2,000" artwork we just put up on the walls.

Igor Gsaliva, accounts receivable, turned in the final total. It worked out to 3,025. Woo-freaking-hoo...

No, we're not celebrating the new millennium. I just have a feeling that you fine folks simply got tired of the old graphic commemorating 1,000 "unique visitors" in a day, because for the first time Elisberg Industries welcomed 2,000 in a day. Not just Whoo-hoo, but Whoo-hoo 2.0.

(And when I say "unique visitors," I mean it, because we here at Elisberg Industries consider all of you unique. Except perhaps the McBeebee twins. But even there, a little wiggle room exists.)

By the way, the Board of Directors met this evening, and by an almost unanimous vote, it was moved, seconded and approved to offer our official thanks and appreciation to everyone who occasionally wanders by through the corridors here. We'll have our intern Larry Bondurant get a nice plaque made up, and will place it by the front door. He's not the swiftest boat in the marina, so if you don't see it there for a few weeks, please be patient.

And with all that said and done, it is important now to check the final turnstile count. Igor Gsaliva, accounts receivable, has passed along a note that the tally at the end of the day was 2,364.

I've been having annoying issues with the Shockwave Flash plug-in not wanting to play nice with my browsers. First it was with Firefox, and the problem got so bad I gave up and switched to the Chrome browser. That was going okay, albeit with a few hiccups along the way. But today it was unworkable -- and I couldn't even get Internet Explorer to run. Even rebooting didn't help. What has helped -- at the moment -- was a complete system shutdown and turn everything off. Right now, that cleared up the issue, though I expect it to return. On the Firefox front, I was told that they just released a new version of their browser, so hopefully that dealt with fixing things. I updated mine, and it seems to be working -- at the same proverbial "moment" -- so, we'll see.This is why there was a long delay posting new material. I simply couldn't access anything.At the moment -- we're up an running...

It's travel day again. This time heading back from the topic climes of balmy Chicago and back to the lands of the West Coast. I give this as a heads-up to the elves at the home office so that they can not only straighten-up the mess, but also make sure the refrigerator is re-stocked.Because of the time change, I likely won't have any new postings until in the late afternoon or earlier evening. Until then, play nicelly among yourselves.

As some readers here may have noticed, there is an odd tech glitch that happens on rare instances when someone is trying to send a Comment. Usually, all is fine -- but every once in a while, an error message pops up that says the comment couldn't be delivered, and so the person sends a second one...even though the original message went through fine Sometimes that will happen repeatedly, and three or four messages get sent, despite the error message saying none went through.I've been trying to resolved this for many months with the company that runs the site, but so far they're as bewildered as anyone. What they asked today is that if anyone who gets that error message could please take a screen shot of the error message and then forward it to me, I can then send it to the company.Mind you, I don't expect anyone to take a screen shot of any error message. Just saying that if the error box does pop up, and you are able to take a screen shot, it could possibly help resolved this. Though even that is in question.Fortunately, the error message doesn't occur too often. Just more often than it should.Thanks.

This week, the Consumer Electronics Show begins -- what I call The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. So, I'm heading off early Monday morning for the drive to Las Vegas, while the Elisberg Industry minions hold down the fort here on this end.I'll be swamped during the show, so likely won't post as often, though I'll try to have updates from the show, and a few unrelated tidbits, as well.

Author

Robert J. Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for the Huffington Post. Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel. As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.